The rise of the administrator in government
We enter a scene at a hearing on the powers of the Secretary of Defense in 1949. Senator Saltonstall asks Secretary of the Air Force […]
organizational design
Implications of the Space Development Agency
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on Tuesday [March 12, 2019] officially established the Space Development Agency as a separate organization within the Department of Defense […]
Can the F-35 really achieve a 15-to-1 kill ratio?
… the U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II, who had just been declared IOC (Initial Operational Capable) achieved a resounding score in mock aerial engagements against […]
What causes of corporate welfare in the defense industry?
In a previous post, I discussed how it is critical to separate the idea of corporate welfare from efficient organizational design. In this post, I […]
A discussion on program office organization
Following up on the podcast, here’s a bonus Q&A with the gracious Victor Deal: Eric: During the podcast, you said: “There’s this sense that perhaps […]
Conditions for solving wicked problems
“Wicked problems” are problems that don’t just sit there and let you work on them. A tame problem is like an engineering problem or like […]
Paul Romer on culture and technology: lessons for acquisition
Do you think that the distinction between growth at the frontier and catch up growth is always so well defined? So if you think about China, they seem to have innovations: how quickly they can build things; they have an autocratic government, but they’ve managed to keep reasonable stability and the public on board. Isn’t that kind of innovation like a technological innovation and their growth in a way is at some other frontier rather than being just catch up?
How to save $1 trillion on defense spending
I was recently in an interesting round-table discussion where one gentleman was talking about a plan to cut $1 trillion of defense spending over ten years. He said there was interest on this subject from both the progressive left and the deficit hawk right. But how would you do it?
Do intangibles lead to a productivity divergence?
When intangibles hardly matter, then capital and labor ought to be about equally productive across all firms. When intangibles matter a lot, then productivity differences will widen. What does this mean for defense organization?
Space Force: what’s the organizational design?
The Space Development Agency, which would be a joint procurement arm in charge of setting standards and avoiding the duplication on space technology, appears to […]